Lending Club's CEO, Renaud Laplanche said about Google's investment in his firm:

We believe our relationship with Google will be very helpful in better serving our customers. We couldn’t be more excited to have them on board.

When you look at Google's investment activity in the crowdfunding space, it's clear that the firm believes in the potential of crowdfunding. But some news that the search/technology firm dropped today may point to a more hands on approach it will be taking to crowd funding in the future.

Google Announces That YouTube Will Launch CrowdfundingWitha video and blog post, Google announced some new changes it would be making to the creation tools for publishers of videos on its video network, YouTube.

One of those changes would be that YouTube would be joining the crowdfunding excitement.

Here's why: Google monetizes the billions of videos watched on YouTube by showing advertisements to viewers. In turn, YouTube shares those revenues with the producers of such videos. But here's the thing: a lot of those videos are made to promote products and services sold off of YouTube.

Once someone clicks off a video, YouTube loses the opportunity to make more money off a user.

So, this new announcement that Google would begin providing a mechanism for viewers to directly pay the makers of videos on YouTube changes the rules of the game.

“The problem is, a lot of this funding happens off YouTube. So I’ve been thinking about we can do this directly on YouTube, allowing fans to fund the creators that they really love.”

How will YouTube inject crowdfunding into videos?

Sources say that many content creators on YouTube have voiced their frustration that advertising revenues have been dropping over time. That's actually lead to a few of the larger publishers to leave YouTube in search of better revenue-producing platforms.

YouTube -- and parent, Google -- recognize the potential size of the crowdfunding market (expected to be worth hundreds of billions of dollars in the future), so it's working hard to collaborate with the Kickstarters and Indiegogos of crowdfunding.

Unfortunately, Google's announcement didn't give more details on what crowdfunding would look like or how crowdfunding would work on YouTube, but that hasn't stopped analysts, journalists, and bloggers from speculating.

YouTube has been cooperating with crowdfunding sites for some time; Kickstarter and Indiegogo were some of the first external websites that video producers could link to via video annotations. The video service didn’t offer any additional details on what its own crowdfunding features will look like, but given that history, it’s possible that YouTube will try to complement Kickstarter rather than directly compete with it.

The iconic Veronica Mars stands as an industry touchpoint for the power of crowdfunding to finance films that may have not found studio backing. While there is no indication YouTube is getting into the film production industry for tentpole movies – a successful funding structure would certainly aid in setting a strategic tack to head in that direction.

Whether it's financing new forms of movies or just providing a mechanism to donate money to video creators, it's clear that Google is intent on investment more money -- and resources -- into ensuring that it's a dominant force in the crowdfunding industry.

Apple will
buy Netflix …and here’s why? Apple has been stalled out the gate with their
content play, Apple TV package, they abandoned it last month because they could
not get the rights to the content they wanted they have left it too late! Tim Cook’ strategy will be to go shopping with
the $200 billion he has in cash. Apple will buy Netflix for $50 billion. The algorithm
Netflix has created and the deal it has in play and the market mover advantage will
kick start Apple TV to form Apple Content.The 60,000,000 Netflix subscribers
watch content and tell Netflix by what they click on and for how long and what
they watch and when will actually crowd source the data Netflix needs to keep
going. To put a crowd sourcing and crowd funding spin on it Apple could fund new
content from the 60,000,000 subscribers at $10.00 a month on top of the Netflix
existing membership payment, as a standalone investment vehicle to create a Netflix
crowd funded studio actually modeled on Disney’s Silver Screen Partners Fund from
the 1980s to fund new content that the public have shares in. Imagine not only
be a member of Netflix but actually an investor in their content pipeline and
get a credit and a return on your investment if they knock it out of the park.
Imagine $600,000,000 crowd funded each month for Netflix to create new content
for Apple TV. Netflix Studio, Netflix independent, Netflix documentary, Netflix
theatre and on and on…In 2016 Netflix will spend $3 billion on new content,
imagine Apple owning Netflix letting it run as a standalone but with a crowd
funding fund that replenishes every month and is not on the balance sheet of
Netflix as debt. Talk about Crowd Source Capital!

or

Disney
will buy Netflix… and here’s why? Because of Bob Iger’ existing
relationship with Netflix and his penchant for acquiring content rights so far
Pixar, Marvel and now George Lucas it makes total sense to acquire the pipeline
for content distribution that leads the world. With ESPN falling off a cliff
with traditional cable unbundling like expanding foam why not transition ESPN
and content to Netflix make it the pipe of content distribution as traditional dies
off. Just imagine all the Star Wars content available one movie at a time on
Netflix how many would join just to sign up for each film and remain hooked…As
Disney is in the content business why not have the public crowd fund a second
tier of content for you and give them risk with reward how exciting would that
be…

The Salvation
Army charity buys Kickstarter or Indiegogo! Now that Kickstarter and
Indigogo are proven business models for rewards crowd funding how about the
Salvation Army buying www.Kickstarter.com or www.Indigogo.com with what you
say? On January 20th 2004 the Salvation Army received $1.5 billion
from Joan Kroc’ wife of McDonald’s founder… she died on October 12th
2003. The $1.5 billion went to building community centers all 35 of them. So
the money has been spent, but not leveraged as of yet. However with this model
they would have a perpetual income every year. Add www.justgiving.com and they would
be a power house in the crowd funding and
charity space.

Google Ventures decides to invest further in the crowd sourcing and crowd funding space in crowd and on line funding platforms. They have already invested $17,000,000 on top of $42,000,000 in On Deck Capital which raised $200,000,000 in an IPO in 2014 and before that Google invested $125,000,000 in www.Lendingclub.com which floated the same year. So Google Ventures makes a play for www.fundingcircle.com and www.crowdcube.com I am expecting a call from Google Ventures to my office here at www.crowdsourcecapital.com. Just kidding...Google Ventures targets on line platforms specializing in the provision of debt. (see You Tube Enters into Crowd funding by Zack Miller. YouTube will announce in 2016 a new platform partnership between YouTube and crowd funding. It already owns stakes in Angel List and Circle Up.

Crowd Source Capital/ Crowd Funding - The Definition

Crowdfunding (sometimes called crowdfinancing or crowdsourced capital) is an approach to raising the capital required for a new project or enterprise by appealing to large numbers of ordinary people for small donations. While such an approach has long precedents in the sphere of charity, it is receiving renewed attention from entrepreneurs such as independent film makers, now that social media and online communities make it possible to reach out to a group of potentially interested supporters at very low cost. Crowdfunding is also being experimented with as a funding mechanism for journalism and music.

Crowdsurfing

A recent discovery by us of another movement existing alongside Crowdsourcing- "Crowdsurfing" - in the same space. Who knew?

Wikipedia: Crowdsurfing describes the process in which a person is passed overhead from person to person during a concert, transferring the person from one part of the venue to another. The "crowd surfer" is passed above everyone's heads, with everyone's hands supporting the person's weight. At most concerts and festivals the crowd surfer will be passed towards a barrier in front of the stage by the crowd, where they will be pulled off and put onto their feet by the security stewards. Then, they will be sent back to the side or rear of the crowd at the end of the barrier or they may be ejected from the venue (depending on the policy enforced).

Business definition: We would therefore like to welcome you to the world of the crowd surfer: a world in which a new generation of business and political leaders have learned how to harness the energy, ideas and enthusiasm of today’s empowered consumers. They are not manipulators, demagogues or mere populists. They have been smart enough to recognise that people around the globe – emboldened and enthused by a new spirit of enquiry and self-expression, and powered by the internet – have changed the rules of the game. They realise that surrendering absolute control – giving their customers, partners and employees a greater say in the way that their businesses operate – is paradoxically, the most effective way to manage their corporate or political destiny.

In Crowd Surfing, they examine what it takes to become a crowd surfer.

Subject: [Crowd Source Capital] New comment on How Matt Mickiewicz started 99designs.com and made....

תוכנית עסקית has left a new comment on your post "How Matt Mickiewicz started 99designs.com and made...":

I used 99designs and it is really awesome. The Learnable marketplace also sounds very compelling. I guess he finds himself good in creating marketplaces, although from my experience in creating hundreds of business plans to start-ups - creating a marketplace is x10 harder than a service/content website/application bcs you need to convince both customers and suppliers to use it, while one will not come as long as the other doesn't... so if he manages to create marketplaces - he really has a unique ability in hand. Way to go!!!

very nice post on this blog i like it. Now –a-days, every business advertises promote its products and services by creating a company’s website. There are many website designing company in Delhi which provides web design services, web development, web design and development and many more. After creating your website the first way you can make the internet work for you is thorough SEO work.SEO is vital to your success with internet marketing.

Yes, it's a clone. But everything will get cloned and honed, that's the law of the internet. Indiegogo is better because it has 4 different ways of payment, including Paypal, and projects can be made internationally, unlike on Kickstarter. So I, who live in finland, could start a project on Indiegogo, but not Kickstarter. Indiegogo is totally needed and has differing market segment.

Then again, Indiegogo has clunky website, you have to look the status of the projects one by one, while on Kickstarter you can see them on the small reviews. Also, the website is a bit too similar.

They also differ, as you noted, on the payment system. Indiegogo made it so that project always gets any money donated. That isn't really a problem, because the project manager can just promise that even if the amount is not met, he'd work towards the goal with the money he got. He could do it partially, and ask more again there for finishing or he could sell ads on the beginning for the rest of the money. I am thinking of getting money for a high-tech product using Indiegogo, the incentive would be to release all software as Free Software, and such stuff...

Saw your post on Crowdsourcing resources and figured I'd point you towards our product, UserVoice. We allow you to crowdsource customer feedback through an idea submission and voting system. We are different from the competition (in many ways, but primarily) in that we limit the customer's votes to 10, with 3 max spent on each idea. This forces people to really consider their choices and use the currency of votes wisely...bringing the best content to the top. As customers only get votes back when an idea is completed, it also encourages the company using UserVoice to be consistently listening, responding to, and acting on customer ideas.

Give it a look if you get a chance - I'd be happy to provide more info if you're interested.

Hi - I just stumbled across your blog and like what you are doing. I have a deep interest in crowdsourcing and crowdfunding... I am starting a crowdsourced business consulting firm as we speak. We should catch up at some point and share ideas.

I'm a big fan of this blog so don't mean to be critical, but one thing in this post caught my attention.

Because of how MTurk lists the totals, the fact that the number of tasks went from ~192k to 177k doesn't necessarily mean that 15k tasks were done in that short time period. I think that if you post that someone can do your single task and allow it to be done 1000 times, the count goes up by 1000. You could then click cancel and it will go down. So a lot of the churn you see can be driven by that.

Panos Ipeirotis of NYU has the following info on MTurk activity:http://hyperion.stern.nyu.edu/mturk/... as well as top requesters.http://hyperion.stern.nyu.edu/mturk/requesters.php

Other than that small point, I think this post is dead on and that businesses certainly have a use for MTurk. Unfortunately, MTurk's interface is still kind of clunky and businesses have to go through intermediaries like CrowdFlower or Smartsheets to get stuff done. It's hard to just crowdsource a single one-off task.

I came across your site by chance today....you are doing a lot of great stuff....anyways you might want to check out the vpanel of feb 26th at www.shiftworldwide.com and the presentation I gave on March 10th at IIMA in Vancouver (www.iimaonline.org).

Rick

Rick Goossen, CEO

T:604-685-7784

C:604-785-6334

Skype:rickgoossen

"Good for Business"

Anonymous said...

ArtistShare has been doing it successfully for years. They seem to have a more realized version and the product seems to be more mature and realized. I agree, just selling a CD isn't cutting it anymore.

There is another concept that works well at the moment and that applies to any type of art (including music, movies, books, painters, etc). Basically, artists set up a fundraising goal as well as a deadline to raise the money. If they reach the fundraising goal by the deadline, the money is transfered to them, otherwise it is given back to investors. What's more, crowdfunders are not actual investors, since what they get back in exchange is rewards based on how much they gave, like for instance if they give 5€ to a book project they'll get a digital copy of it, and if they give 20€ they'll get the actual signed copy.I found a website following that model called FansNextdoor.com.Any thoughts on this model?

Thanks for the post. You’re right, we’re really trying to shift focus from technology with Dot and encourage people to think about how their mobile can make life better and more fun. We’ve got some great suggestions so far and it’ll be interesting to see what else people want to see.

Hi guys, thanks for covering this! I just wanted to let you know that there's an updated version of this interview on Brand-e (the original version included some copy that wasn't exactly what I said ;-) amended version here http://brand-e.biz/outsourcing-to-the-masses_3903.html it would be great if you could update the article here as well... thanks a lot, cheers, Fran

And made me think you might like to know about this ...Ponoko - the world's easiest making system- An online marketplace for everyone to make stuff, locally.- Designs are instantly priced online, then made and delivered on demand.- For creators, digital manufacturers, materials suppliers and consumers.- Over 30,000 user generated products made to date.- Launched in 2007 at TechCrunch40 in San Francisco and reported in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, The Economist, BBC News, The Globe and Mail, WIRED Magazine, The International Design Magazine, MIT Technology Review, Boing Boing, Engadget, Core77, etc, etc.- You can find out more here: http://www.ponoko.com/about/the-big-ideaI'm looking forward to reading your next edition! :)

Best wishes,

Olga

Olga SasplugasMarketing

Anonymous said...

And it's happening for filmmakers on IndieGoGo. Exciting stuff. (www.indiegogo.com)

Hi James,Thanks for the Crowd Source Capital coverage. You can check out our Facebook Application here if you're curious. Through this app, fans don't have to leave Facebook to take action (contribute, share, etc.) We were one of Facebook's "Facebook Connect" launch partners; so all activity you and your fans take on both IndieGoGo hits the newsfeeds and walls on Facebook. Cool stuff.

CheersDanaewww.indiegogo.com

Anonymous said...

Never mind the potential liability Prosper.com is facing after having sold almost $180 million in unregistered securities...

Cambrian House is still alive, we have a crowdsourcing technology platform built on years of experience and we're currently pleased about how everything is going. You can check it out at www.cambrianhouse.com and our platform at www.chaordix.com

Don't believe everything you read on the internet, that's just silly ;)Blue

I recently came across your blog and have been reading along. I thought I would leave my first comment. I don't know what to say except that I have enjoyed reading. Nice blog. I will keep visiting this blog very often.Betty